Listen To the World As It Drifts In
by poetzproblem
Summary: It's been an odd few months. And through all of the drama and upheaval and revolving roommates, Quinn Fabray is still in his kitchen. Follows Let the World Spin Outside Our Door. Faberry Week, Day Seven: Nightmares


**Author's Note:** Written for Faberry Week, Day 7 - _Nightmares_. Follows _Let the World Spin Outside Our Door_. Title from Jon Lord's _Evening Song_.

Eternal thanks and cyber-hugs to Skywarrior108 for being the most awesome beta.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own _Glee_ or the characters, I just like to play with them…strictly non-profit.

* * *

**Listen To the World As It Drifts In**

* * *

_One need not be a chamber to be haunted.__  
~Emily Dickinson_

* * *

It's been an odd few months.

Santana had unexpectedly reconnected with Brittany and moved out of their shared loft to undertake some kind of lesbian sexcapade across the globe from which they've yet to return. Blaine had moved in, only to move right back out a few weeks later when he and Kurt could do nothing but argue—Kurt still isn't happy about this minor glitch on the path to wedded bliss. Blaine is now living with Sam Evans, who'd crashed on their sofa and generally annoyed them all for a few weeks before they'd both moved in with Mercedes Jones, who is now living in New York just a few blocks away.

And through all of the drama and upheaval and revolving roommates, Quinn Fabray is still in his kitchen.

She's made good on her promise to sleep over more often, spending half the summer bunked down in Rachel's bedroom before heading back to New Haven full-time. The fall term at Yale had barely been back in session before Quinn was already visiting them again. Her presence really has made such a difference with Rachel, and Kurt thinks that they're possibly the most adorable couple that he's ever seen—well, other than Blaine and himself, of course—except for one small problem.

They're not actually a couple.

According to them, anyway. Kurt begs to differ, though he won't make the mistake of voicing his perception of the situation again anytime in the near future. Quinn can still be incredibly unpleasant when she chooses to be. He has a feeling that her disagreeable reaction to the subject is directly proportional to how much she actually wants to be with Rachel in that way.

A year ago, he wouldn't have ever entertained the notion that Quinn Fabray could be attracted to any woman, let alone Rachel Berry, but Santana had eventually corrected him on his misconception—he still cringes at the mental image she'd gifted him with—and now he's almost positive that Quinn is ready, willing, and able to mend Rachel's broken heart and keep it safe in her care forever. It's Rachel who's digging in her heels and refusing to get too close to the edge of the proverbial cliff.

He gets it; he does. She's still not ready to move on from Finn. It hasn't even been a full year yet, and Kurt still feels a crushing sadness whenever he lets himself really think about Finn being gone. He'd loved his stepbrother, but Rachel was _in love_ with him, and despite the fact that they hadn't been together when he died, she'd still thought of Finn as the person that she was going to marry someday. The scars from that wound run deep, deeper than Kurt can fathom. Whenever he tries to imagine Blaine not being in this world anymore, he can barely breathe around the pain and emptiness that he feels. Rachel is doing more than simply breathing—she's almost thriving with the debut of _Funny Girl_ getting closer everyday.

Professionally, Rachel Berry is exactly where she wants to be. Personally, Kurt is pretty certain that she's so far off course that she isn't even on the map anymore—at least not the map she'd once charted for herself—and he really doubts that she'd ever expected to have Quinn Fabray as her traveling companion.

This morning, he doesn't even bother to comb down his wayward hair as he pads into the kitchen. The bathroom schedule is far more relaxed these days, and he'll have plenty of time to primp after he grabs some coffee. By now, he and Rachel have seen one another at their absolute worst, and Quinn became significantly less intimidating on the day he'd seen her sporting a pair of pink, _Powerpuff Girls_ pajama bottoms.

Quinn puts his coffee down on the table before he's even in the chair. There are bagels and spread already laid out, and despite his plans to meet Blaine for brunch, he can't resist reaching for one as he takes in Quinn's messy ponytail and tired eyes, half-hidden behind a pair of black-rimmed glasses. She's still wearing her pajamas, which today consist of worn, flannel pants and a Yale t-shirt, and she hasn't bothered with any makeup yet. Granted, it's still disgustingly early, but it's unusual for her not to at least have her contacts in and her hair brushed out before she leaves Rachel's room.

"Rough night?" he asks cautiously as he spreads the honey-walnut cream cheese across his bagel. It's one of his few guilty pleasures.

Quinn shrugs. "Just didn't sleep well," she mutters before taking a sip of her own coffee.

Kurt bites his tongue to keep from saying something to evoke Quinn's wrath and instead opts for something lighter. "Did our favorite diva keep you awake kvetching about her co-stars again?" he asks with a knowing grin. Rachel is becoming noticeably more crazed the closer she gets to her opening night, and frankly, Kurt is glad to have Quinn here to bear some of the burden of calming her.

The corner of Quinn's mouth twitches just a little. "That certainly didn't help," she admits, glancing away with a pensive frown.

A frisson of uneasiness tingles down his spine at her odd tone, and he puts his bagel down carefully. "Did something happen that I should know about?" His eyes widen and he gasps dramatically. "The two of you aren't having a fight, are you?" He really doesn't want to deal with their not-quite-lesbian drama on top of Rachel's increasingly obsessive behavioral tics.

"I wouldn't still be here if we were," she tells him with a roll of her eyes before she drops her gaze to her mug as she cradles it between her hands.

"Quinn," he begins softly, not quite sure what to say when he doesn't have a clue what's going on with her.

"It's nothing for you to worry about," she cuts him off with a hard look in her eyes. "And don't say anything to Rachel either. Please," she adds after a moment in a beseeching tone.

He nods once in silent agreement. It takes an incredible amount of effort for him not to push for an explanation because he's dying of curiosity and suddenly worried for Rachel's sake on top of it all. He's imagining all kinds of insane scenarios in his head, from Quinn planning to skip out on Rachel's opening night to dating someone new at Yale to being pregnant again, or heaven help them all, being seriously ill. She certainly looks paler than usual and the dark circles under her eyes are playing right into all of his worst case scenarios.

"Tell me you aren't dying," he blurts out, leaning forward across the table.

Quinn chokes on the mouthful of coffee that she was in the processing of swallowing, spitting half of it out into her hand as she coughs. Kurt grabs some napkins and jumps up to race around the table, resting a hand on Quinn's shoulder as he frets over her. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

Quinn snatches the napkins from his hand with a glare and begins to wipe up the mess. "I'm fine," she rasps in a scratchy voice. "No thanks to you. Where did that even come from?"

"If you're going to be all cryptic and mysterious, then I'm going to jump to outrageous conclusions," he explains with a dramatic wave of his hand.

"Can you at least try to make them less morbid?" Quinn snaps, dragging her coffee cup across the table as she stands. She carries it over to the sink where she dumps it down the drain, jerking the faucet on to rinse out the coffee remnants before she sets it aside and washes her hands.

Kurt watches her methodical actions with a frown. "You know, this friendship thing would be so much easier if you weren't so stubbornly reticent," he answers pointedly.

Quinn has the audacity to flash him a grin as she grabs a towel. "Or you could just mind your own business."

He lifts a single eyebrow, though not nearly as elegantly as Quinn has been known to do. "Your business _is_ my business when you are practically living in my loft every other weekend."

Of course, her tawny eyebrow arches up in challenge, putting his poor attempt to shame. "If you don't want me here, I can easily leave."

"You're not leaving," Rachel insists sharply from over Kurt's shoulder. He startles slightly, not having noticed her approach, and tips back his head to look up at her. He takes in her red eyes and untamed hair, and he wonders again what happened last night that makes them both look like they've had about ten minutes of sleep. He highly doubts it was anything good by the way Rachel is digging her nails into her biceps and nearly vibrating with anxiety while her eyes beg Quinn for something he can't define. "Kurt, tell her she isn't leaving," she demands with the barest hint of panic seeping into her voice.

"I'm not going anywhere until tomorrow," Quinn assures her evenly, though her furrowed brows speak to her obvious confusion.

Rachel seems to relax a little at that, nodding shortly, but her body is still tense as she gingerly settles into a chair, worrying the corner of her lip.

"Okay, what did I wake up to this morning?" Kurt asks, gaze darting back and forth suspiciously between the two women.

Rachel's eyes stay on the table, and she seems to sink deeper into her chair. Quinn sets a fresh cup of coffee down in front of Rachel, pausing to smacks the back of Kurt's head lightly. "What did I ask you before?" she growls lowly.

"Sorry," he mutters, but his attention is mostly on Rachel. She curls both palms around the steaming mug in front of her, staring into its black depths but making no move to drink it.

Quinn slides into the chair next to Rachel and, after a moment of awkward silence from all of them, reaches out to gently tap two fingers against Rachel's wrist, offering a crooked grin. "So, what's on the agenda for today?"

Rachel's gaze lifts to Quinn at the light touch, and her closed-off expression eases into a distracted smile. "I thought I'd leave it up to you."

There was a time, not so very long ago, when it would have been unusual for Rachel to relinquish her detailed, minute-by-minute itinerary for entertaining company and defer to someone else's desires. In those early days of their rejuvenated friendship, Rachel had taken poor Quinn all over Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, too, no doubt singing at every corner. These days, though, Kurt is more likely to find them curled up on the sofa while they marathon some television series or another and argue over the characterization or the merit of whatever twist had been thrown in to muddy up the plot. He and Blaine had joined them once while they'd been watching some show about lesbians in prison, and the experience had scarred them both for life.

"There's this show on BBC America that I've heard good things about," Quinn mentions thoughtfully. "The lead actress plays, like, a dozen roles." Rachel's smile grows decidedly more interested. It's Kurt's cue to get out while he still can.

"Well, that sounds positively enthralling," he interrupts flatly, scraping back his chair as he stands, "but if you'll both excuse me, I'm meeting Blaine for brunch, and then we're going to a _Star Wars_ film festival in Queens. He wants to get there early so he can have an unobstructed view of Harrison Ford when he was still hot." Kurt rolls his eyes—the things he does for love.

Rachel giggles into her coffee cup, and Quinn snickers, an amused grin dancing on her lips. "I'm sure that will be so much more stimulating than hanging out with us," she drawls.

"There are certain perks to spending time with Blaine that the two of you, no matter how lovely, cannot provide," Kurt replies with a smirk.

"Okay, I don't need those pictures in my head," Quinn mutters, flicking her fingers at him to shoo him away. "Go, beware of the dark side."

"And may the force be with you," Rachel adds with a proud grin, obviously pleased with herself for being able to use that line.

"Well, aren't you both just adorable, little, closet Jedis?" Kurt drawls, crossing his arms and looking down his nose at them.

"I believe we would be Padawans at this stage," Rachel clarifies unthinkingly, drawing two surprised gazes to her. She glances from Kurt's wide eyes to Quinn's and back again before ducking her head and blushing. "Sam had the boxed set when he was staying here. I might have watched a few of the movies with him," she mumbles in embarrassment.

Quinn glowers at the mention of her ex-boyfriend and their ex-temporary-roommate—his time commandeering their sofa hadn't exactly thrilled her either—but Kurt ignores her reaction in favor of wagging his finger in Rachel's direction. "I knew it!" he shouts in triumph. "I knew Samuel Evans was somehow to blame for Blaine's sudden obsession with space pirates and light sabers."

"Woah," Quinn grunts, holding up her hands to stop him, "we really don't need to know what you boys get up to after hours with your light sabers."

Kurt releases a pained whimper, face heating at the implication (and the private knowledge that Quinn isn't very far off the mark). "I didn't mean _that_," he tries to defend, but Rachel is already doing a very poor job of choking back her laughter, with shoulders shaking and face turning scarlet from the effort to keep it inside. "You have dirty, dirty minds," Kurt huffs accusingly, attempting to keep _some _of his dignity intact.

Rachel snorts, losing her battle with restraint as she laughs out loud, and Quinn unabashedly joins her. He spins on his heel and stalks to the bathroom for a much needed shower to soothe his bruised ego.

When he's ready to leave, he finds Rachel and Quinn sitting a little too innocently on the sofa as they regard him with matching smirks and intermittent giggles. He doesn't want to know what they've been talking about. He's just glad to see them both smiling after the strange start to the morning.

Kurt spends at least half of the film festival mentally redesigning the horrible costumes and hairdos that poor Carrie Fisher was forced to endure. Really, if _that's_ what's become of fashion in a galaxy far, far away, he'll be happy to stay right here on the planet Earth. After some extra quality time spent with his fiancé in _this_ galaxy, it's very late (or very early) by the time he gets back to the loft, and the girls are nowhere to be seen. He assumes they must already be asleep, so he quietly goes through his nightly ritual before sinking into his bed and drifting off into unfortunate dreams of furry, little teddy bears declaring war on his designer wardrobe and replacing it with camouflage ponchos. It's horrible.

The next morning, he oversleeps, missing the first phase of Rachel's new ritual in which she skips breakfast and rushes off to her early morning class before racing to rehearsals and spending the rest of the day working herself into exhaustion. Quinn, however, is once again in his kitchen, immaculately dressed with her weekend bag at her feet as she sips on her coffee. She's lucky enough to have two late afternoon classes on Mondays, so she still has plenty of time to catch her train. It's only when Kurt looks a little more closely at her eyes that he can see the same lingering fatigue as yesterday.

"I suppose that any questions concerning your health and general well-being would be about as welcome today as yesterday," he muses lightly.

The muscles in Quinn's jaw clench and unclench, and her manicured nails scrape against the table and then curl into her palm. Kurt wonders if he's about to be punched until Quinn sighs raggedly, suddenly appearing more bewildered than he's seen her in a very long time. "She's having nightmares," she says so softly that Kurt barely hears her, and he frowns in concentration as he attempts to process the words. When he doesn't immediately respond, Quinn glances at him sadly. "About Finn," she clarifies.

Kurt presses back into his chair and drags a hand through his hair. "Still?" he questions automatically, and then watches Quinn's expression fall even further into despair.

"I…I never noticed her having them until this weekend," she admits weakly, her eyes glittering suspiciously.

"I thought they'd stopped. She had them right after…well," he trails off, not needing to voice what they both knew too well. "But she's been better."

The nightmares had come for all of them after Finn's death, but Rachel's had been particularly vivid and persistent. She'd woken up screaming more than once and crying dozens of other times. Kurt and Santana had both taken turns sitting with her afterward—Santana more often than not thanks to their close proximity. Those first weeks had been brutal, and of course, those were the weeks when Quinn had been noticeably absent for whatever reason. Rachel had only told him that Quinn had been dealing with some kind of survivor's guilt—he still isn't sure what that means or if he believes it—and Quinn had never offered any explanation at all, but Rachel had forgiven her, so he had as well. Rachel's nightmares had lessened as she'd gotten back into a routine, and they'd seemed to disappear completely around the same time that Quinn had reappeared in their lives.

"Santana swore she wasn't having them anymore, and I never hear her," Kurt insists, more to himself than to Quinn. How could he have been missing them?

Quinn's gaze drifts away to some spot on the wall behind Kurt. "She doesn't really make a lot of noise. She just…thrashes around in her sleep, and then she wakes up crying and mumbling," Quinn hesitates and takes a deep, unsteady breath, "_don't leave me_." She lifts a hand to her cheek, quickly brushing away a wayward tear before she takes another breath and hardens her expression. "I was able to calm her down after it happened, but she won't talk about it. The last three mornings, she's acted like she never even woke up through the night at all."

Kurt nods slowly, hating that Rachel is still struggling and hating that Quinn is feeling hurt because of it. "No wonder you've had permanent bags under your eyes," he comments with a sad smile. Quinn only shakes her head and looks away again. "I wonder what started them up again," he murmurs, mostly to himself.

Quinn exhales tiredly. "Does it really matter? It's always there, in the back of her mind. I thought she was finally beginning to," she trails off with a frustrated shake of her head. "She's never going to get over him," she concludes sorrowfully.

"Of course she will," Kurt argues, reaching across the table cover Quinn's hand with his own. "She's nineteen, Quinn. Obviously, she'll never forget Finn. None of us will. But Rachel _will_ get over the loss of him and move on with her life." Quinn nods silently, though she doesn't look convinced, and Kurt squeezes her hand. "Don't give up on her," he urges.

Quinn's only response is a plaintive, "Just…keep an eye on her, okay."

It's an easy promise to make, but Rachel's hectic schedule conflicts with his more often than not, and their brief convergence over breakfast doesn't seem the ideal time to broach any potentially difficult subjects when Rachel's mind is clearly focused on everything she has to do in the hours to come. So he waits, and he listens, and he even peeks into her bedroom once in the wee hours of the morning, looking for signs of unpleasant dreams.

By Thursday, Kurt begins to think that maybe Quinn was overreacting, because even though Rachel is clearly tired and stressed from rehearsals, she seems to be sleeping peacefully enough once she finally stops moving for the day. It isn't until the wee hours of Saturday morning that he finds out otherwise.

He isn't certain exactly what pulls him out of his sleep, but once he's awake, his mind slowly begins to register the muffled clatter of what sounds like a pot on the stove-top. A quick glance at the time tells him it's just past two a.m., and he stifles a groan as he throws off his sheets and pulls himself out of bed. Sure enough, he finds Rachel in the kitchen, standing at the counter over a steaming mug and mindlessly bobbing a tea bag up and down as she stares at nothing in particular.

"Hey," Kurt says softly, running a hand through his tousled hair.

Rachel winces in surprise before she turns her head. "Oh, Kurt. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you up," she murmurs regretfully. Her eyes are red and puffy in the way that speaks of tears and not simply exhaustion.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks kindly, leaning against the counter next to her.

She frowns. "There's nothing to talk about. I just couldn't sleep."

"Quinn told me that you've been having nightmares again."

A pained expression crosses Rachel's face before she looks away with a whispered, "Oh."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of, Rachel. I still have them too every once in a while," he confesses, wrapping his arms around himself as the remembered images flit through his mind, bringing back a familiar tightness in his chest. "The worst ones are when I dream that I'm with Finn on that last day, and I know exactly what's about to happen…"

"Don't," Rachel cuts him off sharply, eyes flashing. She drags her mug off the counter as she turns away, walking over to the sofa and sitting down without a single glance back in his direction.

Kurt sighs, pushing off from his position and cautiously sitting down beside her. He ignores the fact that she shifts just enough to angle her body away from him, and reminds her that, "Talking about it seemed to help you last time."

Rachel's jaw clenches, and she shakes her head almost imperceptibly. "These are different."

"How so?"

Her fingers tighten around her mug, and she takes a shaky breath. "I…it's…they're not really…about Finn," she admits haltingly, not quite meeting Kurt's eyes.

"Oh." He can't say he's not relieved to hear it, but it does make him curious what other bad dreams are haunting her now. Unless—"Is it the one where you're naked on stage in front of a packed theater and forget all of your lines?" he asks sympathetically, thinking about the stress of her upcoming debut again.

"No," she squeaks, turning to weakly punch him in the arm. "And bite your tongue, Kurt. I don't need to start dreaming about that too on top of everything else."

"So tell me what bogeyman is chasing you," he prompts, crossing his legs and leaning back into the cushions.

Rachel sighs, shrugging. "It's…confusing. And it's never the same dream really, but," she inhales deeply and runs her tongue across her lips to moisten them as she sets her mug down on the table. "It always starts with…with Finn's memorial, or some nightmarish approximation of it. And it feels like my heart is breaking because I know he's…gone," she tells him miserably, a tear escaping over her cheek that she absently wipes away. "And that's when the dream changes. Sometimes I end up on a stage standing next to a piano, or sometimes I'm back at McKinley in the hallway or in the girls' bathroom."

"That _is _a nightmare," Kurt mutters, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

A tiny smile tugs at Rachel's lips before it disappears. "I have this strong sense that I'm looking for someone, but I can't…I can't find them, and I'm trying to move…to turn around and see if someone is there with me, but I'm frozen in place, and my heart starts racing, and it gets harder to breathe because I know…I know she's supposed to be there…"

"She?" Kurt interrupts with increasing interest.

Rachel's gaze darts to his in surprise before she drops her eyes to the floor. "Tonight I was standing in a courthouse," she almost whispers, "in…in a wedding dress…but Finn was already…he wasn't there…and I…I felt this desperation for…for her to be there with me. Because I knew what would happen if she wasn't."

Kurt's eyes widen with every word as he recognizes the scene she's painting, and he quickly sits up straight, dropping both feet to the floor with a thud. "Oh," he gasps in realization. "Oh!"

Hadn't Quinn said that Rachel woke up begging someone not to leave her? She'd thought that Rachel had been dreaming about Finn, but apparently that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Rachel's eyes jerk up and narrow on his. "Don't go all psychoanalytical on me, okay," she warns.

"Do I really need to?" he counters with a knowing grin.

"No," Rachel agrees quietly, dropping her head into her hands. "No, God, Kurt…I…I don't know what to do," she laments. "I keep having these terrible dreams that Quinn is going to…that she's going to disappear that same way Finn did, and I can't…I can't lose her too," she sobs.

"Oh, sweetie," Kurt coos, sliding closer and wrapping his arm around her. "Come here." Rachel turns into his embrace, holding onto him like a lifeline as she struggles to regain her composure. He's not completely certain why she's suddenly dreaming that Quinn is going to disappear from her life in some horrible way—though he can wager a guess—but, "Quinn isn't planning to go anywhere anytime soon," he promises as he strokes a soothing hand over her hair, resisting the very strong urge to work out the tangles he encounters.

"I…I think I'm falling in love with her," Rachel finally confesses after she's calmed down.

"And you're afraid," Kurt concludes, letting go of his friend enough to lean back and look in her eyes.

Rachel chokes out a sad laugh. "Terrified. Do you blame me?" she questions, running her fingers across still-wet cheeks to dry the remnants of her tears. "It's scary enough to feel this way about someone else after Finn. But feeling this way about Quinn…"

She leaves the thought unfinished, and Kurt quirks an eyebrow in challenge. "Is this the part where we both pretend that we have no idea how she feels about you?"

Rachel glances away guiltily, twisting her fingers together in her lap. "I know how she feels. I'm just not sure that I'm ready to…to let go of Finn yet, and I know I can't be with Quinn until I am."

Kurt knows that it wouldn't be fair to either of them for Rachel to drag Finn's ghost into her next relationship. He's almost proud of Rachel for realizing that, even if he is a little disappointed for Quinn's sake, not to mention just plain disappointed because now he's gotten himself invested in rooting for them to be together. He still thinks they will be—Rachel has admitted to falling for Quinn, after all—but he might have to learn to be a little more patient with the pace they've set.

"But I also don't want to watch her fall in love with someone else," Rachel continues with a dark expression settling on her face. "Like that jerk with the ridiculous name at Yale who keeps asking her out. Or…or Noah Puckerman with his stupid hair in his stupid uniform!"

"Okay, where did that even come from?" Kurt asks in confusion, feeling like he has a touch of whiplash from how quickly Rachel moved from rational to irrational sprinkled with an unhealthy dose of jealous. As far as he knows, Quinn hasn't spoken more than a few words to Puck since they'd all graduated.

Rachel shrugs again. "I had a nightmare that she went back to him while I just sat there and watched. I think you were in it too," she tells him with a thoughtful frown. "Something about her donating an egg."

An egg? "That makes no sense."

"Tell me about it," Rachel mutters, shaking her head. "I'm such a mess, Kurt. I want to be with Quinn, but whenever I think about telling her, I feel guilty because it's too soon. I was supposed to be in love with Finn forever, and I still miss him every day, but..."

"But he's gone," Kurt finishes gently. "And you're still here, and Quinn Fabray has always been your secret girl-crush."

Rachel bites her lip, leveling those big, brown, puppy eyes on him. "Was it that obvious?"

Kurt smiles a little, bumping her shoulder with his own. "Not until very recently," he assures her, although to be honest, he can't shake the feeling that he should have seen it back in high school—he just wasn't looking then.

"Do you think Finn would understand?" Rachel asks in a small voice.

"I think he'd want to see you happy," Kurt assures her, deciding not to voice the possibility that it might have taken Finn a while to wrap his mind around the _Quinn_ part. It's something that doesn't seem to make sense at first until you realize that it just does, because, "Quinn makes you happy."

"She really does," Rachel admits softly—a tiny, secretive smile flitting over her lips and a hopeful sparkle igniting in her eyes.

Kurt wonders if she's even aware of the particular look that she only seems to have when she's thinking of Quinn, or gazing at Quinn, or talking with Quinn. He's seen it often enough by now to recognize it for what it is, and he makes a slight, mental amendment to his previous musings about his need for patience. Rachel might not make him wait very long to see his favorite lesbian couple happen after all. (He absolutely won't be describing them that way to Santana if she and Brittany ever decide to come back to New York.)

"Talk to her, Rachel," he advises, looping an arm around her shoulders. She nods as she snuggles into his side, resting her head against his shoulder. They stay that way for quite some time until exhaustion catches up with the both of them, and they pass out together right there on the sofa.

In the nights that follow, Rachel's nightmares don't entirely disappear, but she promises Kurt that she's not having them as often. "Of course, now I end up naked on stage with a severe case of laryngitis, and Quinn is front and center to laugh at me along with everyone else I've ever met," she informs him testily. "So thank you so much for that."

Sometimes he really wishes he could be a fly on the wall of her therapist's office, but then he remembers that she's Rachel Berry, and the experience would probably make him want to rip off his own little fly wings and shove them in his ears. Okay, that's a horrible metaphor—he's never using that one again—but he really thinks Rachel's subconscious will be much kinder to her once she talks to Quinn. In fact, she talks to Quinn almost every day, but he supposes heartfelt confessions should be saved for face-to face meetings.

It's Thursday when Kurt slides open the door to the loft after a long day of classes and work (and a few hours with Blaine) to find Rachel and Quinn tangled up together, blessedly clothed and G-rated—well, PG-13. Quinn is half-lying across the sofa, sunken down deep into the cushions, with Rachel curled into her, their legs entwined and arms loosely wrapped around each other. He's walked in on them in similar positions more than once, but there's something indefinably more intimate about it this time. Maybe it's the soft, content smiles on both their lips, even in their sleep, or maybe it's the way Rachel's fingers disappear beneath the bunched material of Quinn's shirt, exposing a good three inches of her toned abs.

He's torn between letting them sleep and waking them up to grill them on why Quinn is here a day earlier than usual for her biweekly visit and if it means that Rachel is ready to leave the past behind and embrace her future. It certainly looks like she's embracing it pretty tightly from where he's standing. They're far too adorable, and Rachel seems to be sleeping so peacefully that he decides to let them be.

In the morning, he finds Quinn Fabray in his kitchen, kissing Rachel Berry while the coffee brews and the radio softly reports the five-day forecast. It's nothing but clear skies, and Kurt grins widely, barely containing his glee as he watches them lose themselves in their own little world.

Clear skies indeed.


End file.
